WP-Mix – A fresh mix of code snippets and tutorials

Wrapping up 2012, I finally launched xyCSS, which is all about responsive, grid-based design. To showcase xy.css, I used it to design WP-Mix.com, which also serves to house a growing collection of choice code snippets. Currently WP-Mix features over 100 snippets, tutorials, and other useful bits to help with WordPress development and web design in general. The topics are similar to those at Perishable Press (e.g., WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, etc.), but the posts are less-involved and aimed at intermediate to advanced developers.

About the site

As mentioned, WP-Mix.com is focused on two things: showcasing responsive, grid-based design, and sharing as many juicy code snippets and design techniques as possible. While visiting the site, you can see the liquid grid in action by clicking the “show matrix” button at the top of the page.

Default UX view — click the “show matrix” button to view the liquid grid.

xy-grid view — click the “hide matrix” button to return to default UX view.

Details

Here are some interesting tidbits about the site:

WP-Mix.com is built with WordPress and xy.css. Everything is kept as clean and minimal as possible, with only a handful of required plugins:

• Prismatic — syntax highlighting
• Simple Feed Stats — easy feed stats (without Feedburner)
• Simple Basic Contact Form — clean, simple contact form
• Simple Local Avatars — custom local avatars
• WordPress Database Backup — quick and easy database backups

Here are a few more notable moves to further streamline WP-Mix for better SEO, usability, and maintainability:

• Comments are disabled — this greatly simplifies everything
• Tag and author archives are disabled — focuses activity on content pages
• Clean search URLs — replaced query-string with permalink style URLs
• Clear navigation — hyperlinks are underlined, perpetual post nav, etc.
• Distraction-free — everything is focused on the content
• Built with xy.css — for responsive, liquid-grid design

Screenshots

Here are some representative screenshots for WP-Mix:

Squeaky clean, content-focused design

Syntax-highlighting for all code snippets

Streamlined toolbar contains only the essentials

Plans

Going forward, I’ll be posting as many useful/interesting code snippets as possible. I think it’s much better to share snippets than to let them whither in the archives. Plus, posting and organizing the content online makes them available from any location, which is nice when I’m working out of the office.

Other plans for the site include possibly opening it up to registration and user-submitted posts, so that other enthusiasts can share their snippets as well.

So that’s it for now, I hope you enjoy the new site, responsive grid design, and all the code snippets. If you enjoy the site, you can grab the feed for free updates delivered fresh. Tweets also appreciated :)

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Fullstack Developer. Book Author. Teacher. Human Being.